After much thought, I've decided to pass the torch of Head Admin on to the next person. I've been sliding out of touch with the speedrunning community as of late and haven't had the motivation to work with the site. I also don't have the knowledge of all 52 games and two DLC expansions on the site that I need to in order to separate valid BS calls from invalid ones nor do I have the power to fix some issues on the site. I don't get to see any of the social scene on TSC anymore, as it's moved off-site into smaller pockets in which I don't get involved unless called for. When I do get called for, it's typically not for good things; for example, I've recently watched old friends go at each other's throats over events tied to the site. All of this has been a bit much to deal with (and frankly makes me come off more than a bit whiny when all I experience is the negatives), so I think it's time that I give my title to people more willing to invest time into the site with a positive attitude.

As GerbilSoft currently has the most power on the site, he will carry the Head Admin title from here forward.

Thank you to everybody who's been pleasant and helpful during my time heading the site.

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<RPGnutter> Well I think your reasoning was dumb, so you get sassed<RPGnutter> Thats how it works

Of course being the head admin of tsc you are also the head punching bag, if things go wrong, we need/want blame you. we need to blame someone right? to avoid blaming ourselves. I think I speak for everyone when I say we dont want you to go though? can we at least vote on it?

You guys may as well remove me from admin status too. I haven't really been a part of TSC since dropping out of IRC which isn't really fair to the community, and honestly I feel like I've gotten to the point of moving on from this site.

Im personally disgusted by everyone who's viewed this and not posted their thoughts.

we really dont want thorn and parax to leave, if you dont have site leaders, you really do have a dead site. I cant force anyone to encourage them to stay, but everyone should show them support in staying.

you came to this site all the days you wanted to, they came all the days that "needed/had" to. its a big difference, and shouldn't go unnoticed.

Well, you've done a lot here Thorn. I can understand where you're coming from, and I wish you the best wherever you go.

To be honest, I'm surprised Parax hasn't done this earlier. It's been quite a long time since you've done anything on the site, frankly. Anyways, you've still dedicated a lot to the site and I hope the best of you in whatever game you decide to run next (you're the only reason I'm on the site, in all honesty. I really do need to thank you).

I'm hoping Gerbil will be up to the task of handling head admin, which (I assume) would mean needing to be more active in areas other than the site's development/programming. We'll see where it goes from here.

S&A:

I wouldn't say the site is dead. Parax was basically inactive for more than a year, and the site went along fine without one of their main admins. (Fine in a clinical sense, there may have been more tension that I'm not aware of) While, yes, this is big, it already happened for a short amount of time back in 2014, no? I think the site will get along fine. Gerbil, while not very active on the forums, is decently active on IRC and making sure that the site is functioning as normal. Flying Fox, from my experiences with talking to her, is still trying to get used to the position. I still feel like in the long run, she'll be fine. Zeupar is one of the best admins I know. He knows when to be casual and when not to be. He's one of those people made to run a site like this (or any group). It's not like TSC will collapse within the next few days or anything. This happens a lot to many sites, many groups, many businesses. Things will go on just fine.

You guys may as well remove me from admin status too. I haven't really been a part of TSC since dropping out of IRC which isn't really fair to the community, and honestly I feel like I've gotten to the point of moving on from this site.

I think I speak for everyone when I say we dont want you to go though? can we at least vote on it?

I basically let that happen last year when all of the silent people suddenly spoke up about it, so I returned. Unfortunately, not much changed upon my return. If anything, I can't pull the same "leave, then return" stunt twice or it starts losing meaning.

We were planning to post the "Best of March" on the front page today. Would posting it in a few hours make you feel bad?

That second one is a PM, which I guess means I'm a bad person for sharing, but I had to put those two quotes together to say "wow, that's just plain dickish; fuck you." I don't expect anybody to feel forced to say goodbye or to weep at this turn of events, but to immediately question if you can strip somebody else of a title too and then ask if you can bury this topic's announcement to post things about March at the end of April? I hope you step on a Lego barefoot for those sentiments. It was nice working with you too.

Thorn leaving changes the shift of TSC entirely. Now, whenever a dispute has to be decided, it's Gerbil making the calls, and he's probably not around often enough and/or at the "right times" to do just that (not his fault, ofc, but it's the truth).

Giving GerbilSoft the title was more symbolic than anything. The fact of the matter is that the things people have wanted fixed lately have only been accessible by GerbilSoft, so the title went to the person who has that power. Honestly, I expect that he'll notice this topic within a few days and immediately throw the title at Zeupar. It won't mean Zeupar has any more power, though.

As far as I see it, this might begin the (slow) final decline of TSC, once and for all.

No, the final decline began when the community became toxic enough to push me away, not when I took the actual step. If A leads to B and shit happens after B, blame A. I know that I made most of my points in my resignation post about how I felt out of touch, but I wasn't going to call people out on the front page. I left my position because I was sick of watching people use this website to be assholes to each other or to reward immature behavior.

BS calls have become witch hunts. The supersonic917 BS call is the quintessential example, with a few people barging into the topic without permission and a large swath of the community discussing spurious evidence in Skype groups. They may have been right in the end, but that doesn't justify the methods used. For another example, I also had people saying that the best times for the Big Foot boss in Sonic Adventure 2 must be false because they scoured the web and couldn't find anybody else that good. When I pointed out both that one of the people at the top was well respected with no reason to lie and nobody had hard evidence, I started getting yelled at and told I was "corrupt" and making "excuses". Of course, the very next day, I was messaged saying there was a non-TAS video of the top time all along. Hell, I'll give a third example: I currently have a long text file from a member regarding possible cheating in Sonic 1, but half of the arguments within are "the player didn't do this thing how other speedrunners do it" while the other half are "the player used the strategy other speedrunners use this time" but with an angry tone. How do you work with such logic? We're at a point where faking proof is too easy and making BS calls based on hard evidence is nearly impossible, but that doesn't make it okay for people to make BS calls without that evidence.

Dickish behavior is being tolerated and even applauded for some reason. When The Kid throws a tantrum and further destroys broken charts, the correct response is not to glorify the act in YouTube videos and give him lots of Twitter attention. When there's drama between notable site members that threatens to draw everybody in, calling the head admin of said site part of the peanut gallery and saying he'd better not get involved is not the right course of action either. When I do get asked to be involved in drama but I need to do something in the real world such as go to work, I don't care to hear that the timing of my real world obligations is "convenient" for dodging the drama (that we just said some people didn't want me in anyway); I couldn't imagine telling my students that their teacher couldn't make it to class because he had to solve problems for a Sonic the Hedgehog site. Coming home to drama like this after work was never fun.

Everybody seems to want to be a special snowflake lately, and if that special snowflakeness isn't shown to everybody on the site, it's not good enough. It's also the case that people are holding other people to standards that don't actually affect anything on the site. For instance, The Kid destroyed those charts even though everybody who knew him was aware of his zero-point championship just because the site wasn't giving him the title. Zeupar just asked for SonicAD to relinquish the "site owner" title as if somebody else having the words "site owner" in his/her profile would make the person more special or powerful. The two former TSC Race Night moderators started snapping at each other because they each believed the other wasn't upholding the ideals associated with the title, and one of the two even said that without the title, he/she would not do any more work for Race Nights because he/she wouldn't feel special. Even being a moderator on Twitch channels with 10 viewers is considered important to some people around here. These are all just arbitrary titles and aren't worth drama!

Speaking of drama, I found an amusing Twitter exchange that talked about two people claiming they'd stop dealing with recent TSC social drama but that had a screenshot of what looked to be such drama. How exactly does bringing it up again help? Pretend it doesn't exist and use your block button liberally if it gets overwhelming (note: admins don't have the luxury of burying their heads in the sand like that). Poking around Twitter right now, I see a few TSC-related profiles that are mentioning recent drama even now because everybody's so helpful!

"Getting a little tired of seeing stupid shit spread with a friend of mine. Leave him be. I don't want to hear a single fucking word about this whole drama situation anymore."

"…what I saw was a person that I had respect for has been washed away and I am so sick of people doing this shit. Stabbing others in the back and talking shit behind others, starting drama."

Twitter, Skype, Twitch, etc. have block buttons for a reason. Use the damn button instead of acting like kindergartners and then having everything traced back to TSC. Similarly, if you want to minimize drama, don't give people moderator powers in your Twitch channels and Skype groups unless they can use the power responsibly; friendship does not equal responsibility.

My two cents to many of you guys would be to start managing your online friendships better while putting less attention on being some special, recognized person, as your missteps drag in everybody around you. Don't throw around accusations you can't prove, don't shit talk as much (and certainly not publicly), don't award assholery, and branch out of your closest circles of friends once in a while. I have a special Skype group for my closest friends from another website, but I also speak in the site's many IRC channels and touch base with every friendly site member there. Perhaps you could do the same with #soniccenter to stir up a friendlier community? I shouldn't have had to look at a group of my friends who identify as furries—the stereotypical Internet drama group—and think "Wow, if only I had such open, friendly, and accepting people on my website!" Of course, I don't have to think that anymore, because it's no longer my website. :)

FUCK do I hate having to organize these sorts of rants. On a lighter note, does anybody feel like actually having a good time doing anything online? I'm free tomorrow night and I know 200cc Mario Kart 8's been a blast. :P I've been interested in D&D and Pathfinder lately too. Also, as always, I'm looking to polish my waning Puyo Puyo (Mean Bean Machine) skills if anybody wants to puzzle like it's 1993.~

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<RPGnutter> Well I think your reasoning was dumb, so you get sassed<RPGnutter> Thats how it works

For me, it's been a while since I really did anything on TSC so I can't totally remember. But this community was fantastic to me for the first few years after I joined. Since then the site's been in decline and everyone knows it. As an admin what I really wanted to do was bring back the community feeling we had years ago, but it became plainly apparent over time that that wasn't going to happen. Far as I'm concerned, the site is past its prime. TSC is ostensibly about competition, but the site's biggest pieces of functionality are being replaced by ingame leaderboards and YouTube videos. Speedrunning is getting more and more competitive and video-based (between YouTube and Twitch), but TSC still operates purely on the honor system using a system that was implemented in 2003 (twelve years ago) and nobody is willing to change it. It is easier than it's ever been to cheat and falsify proof, yet nobody wants to strengthen proof requirements. TSC is never going to be a competitive hub as long as it sticks its head in the sand and ignores what the world of competition actually looks like in 2015. Site updates are direly needed but the only person with knowledge of the existing codebase and the skills to make it happen is GerbilSoft, and I really don't blame him for not taking on such a gargantuan task by himself in service of a dying community.

In any case, the good I can do personally as an admin is limited. I proposed a lot of ideas, but I don't have the means to make them happen. I can't make this site into what it needs to be, and as of late I've lost interest in trying. I started appearing in IRC less frequently last year because things were getting busy for me, in between other major personal projects I was working on and moving several states away. My nick on IRC ended up expiring and was snatched up by someone from pokemon-lake. SurrealChat staff did not want to help me get it back and decided to freeze the nick so no one could use it instead. At this point it barely seemed worth being on IRC, because outside of TSC, a community I was losing interest in and not visiting very often anymore anyway, I had other ways of contacting everyone I knew on SurrealChat. I let everyone in the IRC channel know I wouldn't be coming by IRC anymore - which limits a lot of what I can do as an admin because a lot of site functionality is not accessible through the site itself and can only be used through CodeGirl - but that people could contact me if I was needed for anything on the site. And nobody ever did. I had flying fox poke me on Skype to ask questions or ask for advice a few times, but that's it. I kind of figured people would at least be upset with me for up and disappearing on TSC, which I did feel a bit bad about, but nobody ever expressed anything like that to me. So I ended up with the impression that no one really cared that I wasn't doing anything as an admin.

At this point I don't think there is much good I can do for TSC. I've lost interest in the community. I'm much more focused on modding and development, something I find more rewarding and interesting than speedrunning, and something I see more of a future for myself in than this. I'm less and less a part of the speedrunning community and of TSC as time goes on, and I've been out of the loop long enough that I don't really know what's going on anymore. I have no idea what the community issues Thorn is talking about are.

For anyone interested in taking up the torch and trying to reform TSC into a competitive site suitable for competition in 2015, here is my advice: don't. TSC has too much baggage accumulated over the years for any meaningful change to happen. It needs a full redesign from scratch and a relaunch, to the point that I feel like that time would be better spent designing a new site entirely from the ground up rather than trying to shape TSC into what it needs to be.

Anyway, those are my two cents. Like I said I'm out of the loop, so apologies if any of what I said is incorrect or outdated.

^ I think what you said is fine. I see that side of things too. However, I can handle a broken system if people can all trudge through it nicely. The community decline is what killed it for me.

Which reminds me, if you're reading any of this and thinking it doesn't apply to you, maybe it doesn't! This isn't the majority I'm addressing; it's the active minority. I'm sorry that the minority set the tone for the whole community.

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<RPGnutter> Well I think your reasoning was dumb, so you get sassed<RPGnutter> Thats how it works

That second one is a PM, which I guess means I'm a bad person for sharing, but I had to put those two quotes together to say "wow, that's just plain dickish; fuck you." I don't expect anybody to feel forced to say goodbye or to weep at this turn of events, but to immediately question if you can strip somebody else of a title too and then ask if you can bury this topic's announcement to post things about March at the end of April? I hope you step on a Lego barefoot for those sentiments. It was nice working with you too.

Huh? I guess you were too busy thinking I was mindlessly shitting on you to actually reason out what drove me to post that, which was the fact that two people stepping down seemed like the perfect scenario to bring up the old issue of having a site owner that doesn't do anything for the site he owns.

The end of April is definitely much better than the beginning of May to post March-related content, yes. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings with that private message. I guess we are even after your extremely salty overreaction?

Everybody seems to want to be a special snowflake lately, and if that special snowflakeness isn't shown to everybody on the site, it's not good enough.(...)Zeupar just asked for SonicAD to relinquish the "site owner" title as if somebody else having the words "site owner" in his/her profile would make the person more special or powerful.(...)These are all just arbitrary titles and aren't worth drama!

That's you misinterpreting things again (maybe because of an angry state of mind?). The reason I asked him that is because having someone who hasn't posted in almost three years as the site owner does give a very bad impression of TSC. That wasn't about e-penis or TSC fame (even the thought of the concept makes me chuckle lol).

^ I find it sad that you're still hung up on the idea of "site owner" meaning anything. New members don't seek out the site owner immediately and can easily be directed to other admins. This seems like needless calling for somebody's head. We had a long talk about how titles are pretty meaningless around here, and I'm disappointed that this still matters. Who should bare the illustrious title of owner of a site in decline? Have you asked if it really affects people's perceptions of the site?

Post whatever you want on the front page, since your position is higher than mine now (hell, I could get banned), but I think when a radical site change like this happens, you shouldn't even have to question if the past or the present is more important.

I also apologize for any drama my posts are instigating in trying to take down other drama. In general, I've found that letting the assholes hide in private hasn't changed anything, but things seem to change a bit, if only temporarily, when I air dirty laundry. This is hopefully my last time ever having to do such a thing, but I see people are still yelling at each other on Twitter anyway…

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<RPGnutter> Well I think your reasoning was dumb, so you get sassed<RPGnutter> Thats how it works

Since my tweet was mentioned, I find it only fair to respond and defend myself.I seriously am not sure what drama is being mentioned, I just posted that because I felt like it and I saw it being mentioned quite a bit on twitter.So I am sorry for possibly worsening this problem.:^)

In addition to that, I agree spot-on with what Parax said in his earlier post unfortunately. I don't have much of anything to add to it, but I do feel that TSC is past its prime. I'm still popping up around TSC from time to time, but it's almost always for competition and not much more (and the competition I offer just feels forced mostly). Many fun times were had here, it got me into competitive Sonic gaming and later full-game speedruns, and has also formed some strong friendships that continue to go on currently. However, the fire that kept me in the irc and constantly competing on the site has seemingly been put out. It's sad to think about sometimes, since TSC was my #1 thing to partake in for years. I mean hell, just thinking about it now, I haven't had the SONIC HEROES championship of all games for quite some time and I've pretty much not cared to do anything about it. There's also a ton of stats that I've done through making videos on YouTube that I didn't even bother to think about uploading the stat to TSC, something I'd never come close to doing in my earlier days on the site. Despite the few things I've done to get both me and others into/back into the site, I honestly don't know how much longer I'll continue to care about this site. Regardless of what happens to TSC in the future I can at least say some good times were had and I'm glad that I found this site back in 2007. Thank you for everything you've done Thorn, as well as anyone else that reads this that helped maintain the site and/or offered some healthy competition.

^ I would not know what his true motives were, but it at least implies that he did it to make a statement (which also can be inferred as nothing will stand in his way of getting what he rightfully deserves, even if it means screwing up a whole chart).

I can go a bit further if you like, but I'd rather focus on better points than what amounts to "ooh, I found a contradiction" and then not saying anything else, if you please.

I did say I would stop organizing RN if there were no titles. I say this because without anyone taking the designation of Race Night mod, the whole concept goes with it. There remains 0 reason to "have" to organize things (and I mean on TSC) if you have to go through the process of working with the community as equals.

Without some leadership, the concept is doomed to fail from the start. There are a lot of games to choose from, a large potential pool of people, etc. Trying to set up a series race requires people that will race just about anything, and there's barely anyone that's active these days that will.

I will admit the title would have served more purpose if it reflected the two most consistent racers, since that instills confidence in people joining, but if you have no one setting up some consistent races, the community will be indifferent to setting them up themselves,

You're basically calling "the community" out for being too lazy to even set up races by themselves, and even if they did, it doesn't belong to TSC anymore, since there's no titles involved?

Think of a title as an agreement without a contract - if you are willing to do X, then you get title Y, with associated power Z, based upon the judgement of the person with the power to give the title out.

So you're no longer wanting to organize racenights (save for the personal issues), because the title Y that you want is no longer warranted by just willing to do X, instead of organizing racenights for ~actually~ having racenights.

Honesty I think I should be head admin of the site, but I will settle for just regular admin status.

It seems to me a big theme about this is BS calls. Reading between the lines it seems to me the BS calling takes a serious emotional toll on thorn, which I can understand. this site has always had a huge unspoken stink about BS calling. With it a huge side of fear of being wrong, to the point that 100% pinpoint accuracy is needed to fire the BS cannon, when in reality some stats don't meet this requirement, and may need to come under question.

Im a veteran of this site, and its been like this from day one when I joined about 100 years ago. Fear, and even scolding for bringing ones stats into question. Me personally I wore it as a badge of honor, im a legitimate player, and loved that my times where good enough to be in consideration of fake.

I bring this up because if you want to talk seriously talk about moving forward and becoming relevant again THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE! people on the fence about coming to this site need to know that the stats they are trying to conquer are valid stats. There is nothing wrong with asking for proof!

this is where I understand thorns "special snowflake" rant. if this where to be instantly instituted you would have your generic 2 or 3 guys just looking to be different, loud, obnoxious, and list insane, super niche occasions where this system would fail, and argue 'LOL NOPE LETS NOT DO IT." without even trying.

I've only been here for a short time (a little over a year) and I know that there was a time a few years ago where there was a ton of competition and activity on TSC. I really wish I were around at the time but that's life, and I miss it.

I can't admit that I've gotten to know the TSC admins well (I've only really talked with flyingfox more than the others), but I do recognize and thank you for the work you've put into this site, both before I joined and after.

As for TSC "dying", I sorta agree with what parax said. If the site's going to have a complete overhaul, it might be best to just start over from scratch to keep up with standards set by today. But that would be a really huge undertaking and require a lot of manpower, and quite frankly, I don't think there's enough people in the community that would be willing to help out and do so.

No, the final decline began when the community became toxic enough to push me away, not when I took the actual step. (...) I know that I made most of my points in my resignation post about how I felt out of touch, but I wasn't going to call people out on the front page. I left my position because I was sick of watching people use this website to be assholes to each other or to reward immature behavior.(...)Dickish behavior is being tolerated and even applauded for some reason.(...)Everybody seems to want to be a special snowflake lately, and if that special snowflakeness isn't shown to everybody on the site, it's not good enough.

Which reminds me, if you're reading any of this and thinking it doesn't apply to you, maybe it doesn't! This isn't the majority I'm addressing; it's the active minority. I'm sorry that the minority set the tone for the whole community.

These two quotes put together have me dumbfounded. So you ackowledge most of the claims you made about the community apply only to the minority yet you still decided to base your line of argumentation for your decision on admittedly inaccurate disrespectful generalizations about our community? Now, that's dickish, and I would say it confirms my assumption that your long "more direct" post was written out of spite, disregarding truth and accuracy in the process. Do you really think picturing our community in your post as a pile of assholes was a good idea? Or did it not matter to you because your level of involvement on the site had just changed? Again, I'm really sad and disappointed by the way you decided to go about this.

A 0p Championship is/was probably one of the most prestigious titles to have on the site, not to mention it's an earned title. It's a rare sight to see someone dominate a game completely. Is it really The Kid's fault to act upon inaction of admins when the obsoletion of Total - Total probably would have done the job?

Honesty I think I should be head admin of the site, but I will settle for just regular admin status.

It seems to me a big theme about this is BS calls. Reading between the lines it seems to me the BS calling takes a serious emotional toll on thorn, which I can understand. this site has always had a huge unspoken stink about BS calling. With it a huge side of fear of being wrong, to the point that 100% pinpoint accuracy is needed to fire the BS cannon, when in reality some stats don't meet this requirement, and may need to come under question.

Im a veteran of this site, and its been like this from day one when I joined about 100 years ago. Fear, and even scolding for bringing ones stats into question. Me personally I wore it as a badge of honor, im a legitimate player, and loved that my times where good enough to be in consideration of fake.

I bring this up because if you want to talk seriously talk about moving forward and becoming relevant again THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE! people on the fence about coming to this site need to know that the stats they are trying to conquer are valid stats. There is nothing wrong with asking for proof!

this is where I understand thorns "special snowflake" rant. if this where to be instantly instituted you would have your generic 2 or 3 guys just looking to be different, loud, obnoxious, and list insane, super niche occasions where this system would fail, and argue 'LOL NOPE LETS NOT DO IT." without even trying.

Honesty I think I should be head admin of the site, but I will settle for just regular admin status.

...

With your past (and still honestly your present) on the site, I think it's unlikely you'll get much of any status.

Hyper:

I am perhaps being a bit optimistic. I don't think that this will affect the site as much as you think it will, still. It'll more than likely be a mix of various statements from both of us.

DsS:

I'd agree. TSC as a whole has been getting less and less competition (though, S06 has been the most active since 2007-2008). While, there are peaks of activity, I feel that TSC will more than likely stay at the level of activity it currently is, if not lower. I don't feel that TSC, with what it currently is, will ever reach what it was back in 2007-2010. Speedrunners after that time moved onto RTAs. A lot of people from TSC (and even CS) moved from doing ILs to doing RTA SS runs. It's just the way that speedrunning has gone. It's honestly unlikely that ILs will be back to the main focus of speedrunners or even speedrunning in general.

I hope this doesn't become a drama-filled melancholy topic like the Emulator Issues topic a while back. That drama was excessive and unnecessary. Don't let it get to that point again. There's no need for this drama on a site just about submitting scores for various Sonic games. I've talked to Otonyshi previously about it and he's stated to me that's one of the things he doesn't like about TSC in the slightest (this was around the time of the emulator topic). Honestly, I'm with him. I can see how the drama on the forums can cause a new user to feel overwhelmed by the discussion in of itself and the manner it is talked about by some of the users on the site. (Yes, this might feel unrelated in its entirety to some, but the things that I see being brought up are going in the direction that the emulator topic did.)

I'll say my thoughts again: I feel that TSC will do just fine. It's not like the current admins are somehow worse without Thorn. While, I know Thorn was helping FF, I still feel FF is a good enough admin on her own, though she might need a bit more experience to feel completely comfortable in the position. Zeupar is absolutely great at his position, he's well thought out and knows exactly how to act in the position. As for Gerbil...Well, I still don't know Gerbil very well. I know he handles the technical aspect of the site well, not sure about the social aspect.

Geez, I typed a lot.

(P.S.: I think that the site does need to make who the staff are more clear. I know from experience back when I originally joined the site how hard it was to find out who the right people to ask certain things were.)

I don't think I've been around long enough to have much of a say in this, but I would like to voice my opinion on one thing in particular, and this was earlier in this topic; shit-posting from one particular admin, you know who you are.

In my view, and this is just one example, it can leave the wrong impression on a newcomer to the site. They could take a look at this topic & think to themselves "that's who they choose as their admins?" Honestly, that's what came to my mind. It doesn't seem like behavior befitting a TSC admin. I guess the point of this is, your posts can have a greater impact on our viewers than you might think, so think before you post.

That's all I really have to say. I don't know the other active admins on here at all to be honest.